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11/20/10

I've gotten so many ideas for crafts I'd love to make this year, from visiting some FAB blogs. I'm just not sure I'll get around to all of them. I do, finally have a few complete, and I figured I would show them off.

First off, I spiffied up my (VERY) sad wreath that I used last year. I saw packs of ornaments in the dollar section of Target in some bright, not-so-traditional holiday colors and I was sold!

So, off came the sad bows, the goofy snowman hanging in the middle and all the greenery. They were glitter tipped baby pine cones on the greenery, so I popped those off to reuse. I loosely tied some purple ribbon around the wreath and then started hot gluing the ornaments and pine comes on. I also found a glittery star ornament at Hobby Lobby that I thought would look pretty in the center.

I knew it needed a little something extra, so I whipped up one of my Margaux flowers and attached that too. I'm not sure I'm completely done with it yet, it feels a bit naked.

Next, I was commissioned by one of the Mom's in M's Scout troop to create her a Christmas mini top hat that she could wear to work. I had so much fun making these at Halloween, I was only too happy to do it. You can check out my tutorial here.

She requested poinsettias, and I took it a little step further when I dug these tarnished jingle bells out of a button jar. I just snipped the very center stamen of the flower out and hot glued the bells in!

I decided a red bow on the back would be a nice way to "wrap" it up (get it... wrap... like a present???).

My last craft occurred to me while wandering the dollar store. I found these styrofoam cones and instantly thought Christmas tree. Apparently, I wasn't the only one cause pretty much as soon as I got home with it I saw more than a few blog posts about them! Hey, great minds think alike! I wanted to have a little mini forest of 3 different trees. 2 of them have bases to give some height difference.

I'm really going for non-traditional colors in decorating this year. It's fun being different! I didn't go foe complete 360 degree perfection on these. I plan on displaying them on the mantle, so I wasn't too concerned about what the backs looked like.

For this tree, I hot glued the end of some white yarn to the base of the tree and wrapped (and wrapped some more) until it was completely covered and then snipped the yarn and hot glued the end down. I attached the red ric-rac garland with 2 straight pins. Then I dug through my button stash and hot glued on some red and aqua buttons as ornaments, tied a red bow and pinned that to the top. No base on this one.

I had a TON of different green ribbon laying around, so I cut 2in strips of 6 different ribbon (widths and texture), made them into loops and attached them with straight pins (a BUNCH of straight pins). I didn't have equal amounts of all the ribbon, so I divided the 6 ribbons up into pairs of three and attached each pair in 2 alternating layers. I really like the button ornaments on the first tree, so I went back to the button stash for this one too. I must admit, I don't love my star topper. I was itching to glitter something so I cut a star out of card stock, sprayed it with adhesive spray and sprinkled on the glitter. I may end up taking it off and doing something else. I hot glued one of those round rubber protector thingys that you put underneath a table leg to protect the floor (???) to the bottom of this one.

This is probably my favorite. I love to candy colors! It's simply strips of ribbon cut long enough to wrap around the cone and straight pinned on the back. I alternated a green stripe, plain green, brown and a multi-color stripe. The topper is a pink glass ornament that I simply stuck right into the top of the foam. I hot glued on a little pink heart button and attached it to a wooden spool that I painted brown.